{"id":510,"date":"2010-08-18T14:09:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T14:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=510"},"modified":"2010-08-18T14:09:19","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T14:09:19","slug":"their_eyes_were_watching_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2010\/08\/their_eyes_were_watching_you\/","title":{"rendered":"Their eyes were watching you"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via the excellent daily newsletter You’ve Cott Mail<\/a>, <\/i>in today’s Wall Street Journal<\/a>: <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

More museums are paying to send stealth observers through their
\ngalleries. Based on what they see, the museums may rearrange art or
\nrewrite the exhibit notes. Their efforts reflect the broader change in
\nthe mission of museums: It’s no longer enough to hang artfully curated
\nworks. Museum exhibits are expected to be interactive and engaging. As
\nwell, many foundations and donors are requiring proof that their
\nfunding is well-spent, and the studies provide data to show a rise in
\ntraffic or exhibit engagement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Turns out, people-watching ain’t cheap though:<\/p>\n

Even with today’s tighter budgets, many museums dedicate 10% of their
\noperating budgets to evaluation<\/b>, which includes observing visitors as
\nwell as passing out questionnaires among other steps, says Kirsten
\nEllenbogen, president of the Visitor Studies Association, a
\nprofessional organization of museum researchers. She works at the
\nScience Museum of Minnesota, which spends $900,000 on evaluation
\nannually, supporting a staff of 12 who produce hundreds of studies a
\nyear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A few years back, pre-Life’s a Pitch<\/i> (Who can even remember what life was like before Life’s a Pitch<\/i>. Boring, I think.), I organized guest bloggers to write for the National Performing Arts Convention’s blog Program Notes<\/i><\/a>, here on ArtsJournal. One especially fantastic post was by playwright Jason Grote<\/a>, called “Watching the Watchers: Gauging Audience Response<\/a>.” It used the following conference session description as a launch pad:

<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/a><\/em> Stop Taking Attendence and Start Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Your Programs.<\/b> What really happens when the lights go down and the curtain rises? Most
\narts groups do a great job of tracking attendance and revenues, but
\nthese are poor indicators of impact. Aside from the buzz in the lobby,
\nis it possible to define – and even measure – how audiences are
\ntransformed? If you had this information, what would you do with it?
\nResults of a groundbreaking new study commissioned by the Major
\nUniversity Presenters consortium in the U.S. suggests that intrinsic
\nimpacts can, in fact, be assessed using a simple questionnaire. Alan
\nBrown, who directed the study, will discuss the results of the
\nresearch, which involved pre- and post-performance surveys at 19
\nperformances by a wide range of music, theater and dance artists…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An excerpt of Jason’s post:<\/p>\n

Of course producers and presenters would like to be able to predict and
\nmanage audience and critical response to what they put on out, as arts
\npresenting is a notoriously stressful and erratic business, but I don’t
\nthink this can be done without severely compromising the integrity of
\nthe art.  Risk is, in most cases, the entire point.  Of course, arts
\npresenters could probably predict, with some degree of accuracy, the
\nacts or exhibits that would be most popular, but this would, in all
\nlikelihood, lead to a steep decline in “difficult” but ultimately
\nrewarding works of art, and the rise of gimmick-driven art, and
\nultimately of arts institutions as weak imitators of the multiplex, the
\nmall, the computer, and the television set – a competition which they
\nwould, most likely, lose.  Why would I go to the trouble of going to a
\ntheater or museum if I won’t be offered an experience that is
\nfundamentally different from what I can get at home, on TV or on the
\ninternet, often for significantly less money?  Even assuming that the
\nquestions being asked related to being “moved” or “affected” by the
\nwork (as opposed to the simple thumbs-ups or thumbs-downs of Hollywood
\ntest surveys), this is still a flattening and oversimplification of
\nsomething that is, when it works, impossible to articulate in any
\ncoherent way.<\/p>\n

The best art polarizes as much as it unites.  Most
\nart that seeks to please everyone is doomed to failure, mediocrity or,
\nat best, a sort of temporary popularity. This is not to say that genre
\nart can never be good – I’m a fan of The Wire<\/i>, Philip K. Dick, sketch comedy, comic books and pop music as much as I am of, say, Lawrence Shainberg’s novel Crust<\/i>,
\nthe poetry of John Ashbery, opera, or performance art, and often the
\ntwo categories are not mutually exclusive (note the references to Flann
\nO’Brien’s The Third Policeman<\/i> on the TV show Lost<\/i>, an
\nincident that caused the postmodern novel to sell more in the last year
\nor so than it did in the entire 20th Century).  What I object to is the
\nattempt to domesticate and commodify a process that tends to sour at
\nits very contact with such concepts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing here<\/a>, as well as George Hunka’s response to Jason’s piece in The Guardian<\/a>.
<\/i>
10% of an operating budget spent on visitor evaluation and consultants being hired to analyze your audiences: money well spent or money wasted on non-artistic pursuits?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via the excellent daily newsletter You’ve Cott Mail, in today’s Wall Street Journal: More museums are paying to send stealth observers through their galleries. Based on what they see, the museums may rearrange art or rewrite the exhibit notes. Their efforts reflect the broader change in the mission of museums: It’s no longer enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}